Fotos de Madrid

            En la Mañana

 

 

            Hoy es sábado, el doce de mayo. Mañana será el Día de las Madres en los Estados Unidos. ¡Besos y abrazos, madres! Mothers' Day, May 13th, 2012.

             This morning, our second day in Madrid, I set off to be adventurous - to find a café for breakfast different from the one the day before. However, the half-remembered map in my head, the original of which lay open on the nightstand in our hotel room next to my sleeping wife, turned out to be no match for the twists and turns, alleys and backstreets and unfamiliar thoroughfares of Old Madrid.

            Short as some streets and alleys are, others seemed to go on for blocks - except when there were no blocks or intersections, just row after row of buildings and shops that played with my sense of direction. Tracing the cobbled streets hunting for breakfast was like tracing the sketchy lines on my palm, some distinct, others faint.

            My grumbling stomach signaled surrender.

            As it turned out, cada día en Madrid, comia el desayuno en el mismo lugar. (Every day in Madrid, I had breakfast at the same place.) Afuera, tomaba el café (I'd sit outside and have coffee), un churro o tortilla (a pastry, not Mexican tortilla), y zumo de naranja (orange juice). Muy delicioso, es verdad . . . y como las mujeres hermosas madrileñas que veia andando por la calle (like the women of Madrid I saw walking to work) dark-eyed, sleek black hair, stylishly attired. So I went to the same place. Why quit winners?

            The proprietor of El Pequeño was still setting up. He wore a tan apron knotted in the back, a white shirt and black bolo tie, a pencil behind his ear, and a small gold band on his ring finger. He remembered me from the day before.

            "Solo un momento, señor." He slid the remaining wrought-iron chairs with floral cushions to their tables and cranked up a half dozen umbrellas, green and yellow and orange. Morning sunlight flickered through leafy street trees, dappling buildings across the way. The sky above was Mediterranean blue. My host went inside, then returned with a French press of coffee and handed me a menu.

            I ordered, and opened my copy of Las nieves de Kilimanjaro just to impress any onlookers. I even skipped a ways into the book and dog-eared the page.

            Breakfast arrived.

            "Where do you arrive from in the States?"

            "Seattle."

            With a cry, he said, "Ah, Mah-re-nars! New catcher. Montero! Jesús Montero es de Venezuela, like me."

            Big grins and a high-cinco. ¡Buena suerte, Trader Jack! (Jack Zduriencik, newly arrived Seattle Mariners General Manager; later fired.)

            Of course it's a small world.

 El viaje

            The plane to Spain flew us mainly from the rain in Seattle. Seats were so-so, attendants sort of attentive, and the food was sub par. Things seemed to have slipped since the same flight two years earlier. Or civilization's continuing descent had sped up, along with fares' ascent. Or I'd become my mother.

            Regardless, along with four hundred or more souls, my fair lady and I gamely endured the eight-plus hours from Seattle to London. As always, Heathrow Airport challenged adequate description. Five terminals over several acres connected by space-age glass elevators, dizzying walkways beneath open-beam girders leading to profoundly long escalators, and aboard glamorous and spanking-new subterranean trains - it was as confounding as it was impressive.

            Clearly we had no time to make the connecting flight to Madrid, but nonetheless we raced through crowded malls, dodged multilingual, plodding dawdlers, up and around and through the maze - only to find we had time for a gulped sandwich. Then off we flew to Madrid where the cabbie was friendly, the sun was shining, and the ambience decidedly, well, Spanish.

            The next morning, after breakfast and talking béisbol with my new friend, commerce began to stir in earnest. Delivery trucks wound through the narrow streets while most of the city still slept. Spanish folks usually party late, but tourist groups were out early, dodging the trucks and pointing and clicking. I did not blame them. There was an enchanting feel to this ancient Andalusian city.

 

            Andaluz

            European cities hold in their bosoms the DNA of their colorful histories.

           For seven hundred years, Spain was not Spain. It was Andalusia, the word possibly a derivative of "vandal," and it was Muslim. Between 711 and 1492, while the rest of proto-Europe was picking up the pieces of a shattered Roman Empire - long-haired and barely literate tribes vying for corners and strongholds from which to bloody each other - a Moorish dynasty that originated in Damascus hosted a cultural, artistic, and intellectual world in Andaluz.

            To be sure, Andaluz was not spared its share of brutal wars and savagery typical of all human history. Yet it was the cultural and intellectual center of what we now call Europe. Notably, for hundreds of years Toledo was known as far away as northern Germany's impenetrable forests and the distant British Isles, even to Rome and Greece as a center of learning and art. Religious diversity was the rule not the exception - Jew, Muslim, and Christian respecting and learning from one another.

            From its high promontory surrounded on three sides by the Tajo River, tolerance was honored in Toledo for some time, even after its "reconquest" by Christians in 1053. Buildings carry inscriptions in Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin. Muslims famously translated and imported ancient Greek classics, kick-starting the Renaissance. Arabic astronomers gave names to many of the stars we locate at night, and Moors founded cities that still stand (Alhambra, from the Arabic "al-hambra", the red fortress). The transplants from the Middle East laid the groundwork for much of Humanist thought and for a man from La Mancha.

            Madrid's famous Prado Museum is said to be the finest art museum in the world. Wandering room to cavernous room (it is impossible to take it all in -maybe after a month!) wall after wall and side-by-side are great masterpieces of the world by Goya, El Greco, Dürer, Bosch, Murillo, Rubens, Titian, Breugel, and most of all Velazquez. Pictured are royalty, greater and lesser nobility, neoclassic figures from mythology, and common folk doing everyday things .

            But Spain's violent history isn't ignored either. As Christianity supplanted Islam, tolerance disappeared. More than one Prado painting depicts the ghastly auto-da-fé, the court, so-called, of the Inquisition. Its horrors are legendary and well-reported, but it was another matter to see portrayed on a mural-sized paintings the awful event staged in the historic Plaza Mayor.

 

            Hundreds of people look on, watching the spectacle from rows of balconies. Royalty is in attendance. Prisoners - those accused of any form of heresy (Jew, Muslim, witch, non-party line, political enemy, poor person caught in one web or another) - wait in the plaza wearing tall, oddly colored dunce caps. One-by-one they are escorted into the dock to be "examined," always found guilty, then taken to be burned, slowly strangled, or otherwise gruesomely dispatched.

            Spain was not alone, of course. Drawing and quartering and equally horrible tortures and executions were a popular public event in England and France for centuries. (To be sure, many many years later, torture and "confessions" shouldn't surprise Americans.) But the Spanish Inquisition became synonymous with the brutality of the Middle Ages - and all in the name of a Christ who preached love and grace and mercy.

 

            Our lodging was at the Hotel Plaza Mayor, a mere block-and-a-half from the infamous Plaza itself, now entirely enclosed by three-story residential buildings and street-level shops. Scores of balconies face the rectangular space larger than a football field. Today the Plaza Mayor remains a cultural and iconic center of Madrid and is where many public events take place.

            On the first evening of the week-long San Isidro Festival, hundreds of chairs and a standing-room-only crowd filled the entire square facing a stage. On it was a full orchestra, chorus, soloists, guitar octet, and flamenco dancers. Later there was a light show. Children were perched on shoulders and cameras flashed. Like elsewhere throughout Madrid, strange-looking fellows wandered through the crowd, chirping through mouthpieces like tuneless birds. It was as if they'd inhaled nitrous oxide, as they launched colored-light gizmos high into the air which then parachuted back to earth. Always on the lookout for pickpockets, our passports and money were secured in double pockets.

            If we thought the ecstatic celebration would end in the crowded plaza, we were mistaken. On and on in adjacent streets, revelers celebrated a futbol victory by Atletico Madrid. Fireworks lasted past midnight.

             Guernica

            Picture it. The national legislature is hopelessly split and acrimonious. Accusations fly, hyperbole and distortions abound. Knee-jerk and loud distrust is the order of the day. The economy of Europe, even the world, is in historical disarray.

            On one side are "liberals" - largely, educated businesspeople and residents of the big cities who pushed to keep the country moving forward and to improve living conditions for the less fortunate including health care. They hold a slim majority, including the presidency.

            On the other side, "conservatives" play to folks on farms and in small towns and claim to represent the poor. They talk of patriotism, past military glory, and distrust of intellectuals. In fact, they are supported by the upper economic strata - "one-percenters" we might say - which sees their powerful, long-standing wealth threatened by "progress." Included on this side of the divide is, oddly, the strong religious right whose hold on the rural, faith-based, less educated populace is, literally, a fact of life.

            Neither faction seeks compromise. The rest of the world watches nervously because other larger, more dangerous forces threaten from unfamiliar quarters.

            1936 Spain.

            Into this dry tinder is thrown a match - a bitterly contested national election followed by violence and anarchy in the streets. Generalissimo Francisco Franco's forces ("Nationalists") move through the countryside, eventually converging on Madrid. The elected government ("Republicans") are poorly armed and not supported by other nations which largely avert their gaze - the Soviet Union a notable exception. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler sees an opportunity to unleash the might of his Wehrmacht. The Luftwaffe carries out the world's first carpet bombing, decimating an unarmed, unsuspecting small Basque town called Guernica.

            The young genius Pablo Picasso is in Paris. He sets aside a piece he's working on for a prestigious exhibition and creates one of the world's great masterpieces, the "Guernica." In black and white and gray, the huge painting is known throughout the world as a ghastly depiction of the horrors of war and the toll that all wars take on innocent civilians from time immemorial. It now takes pride of place in Room 206 in the Sophia Reina Museum in Madrid.

            Not until after Franco's death in 1975 was the painting allowed to return to Spain. In front of awed viewers, a terrified warhorse rears, a sword blade extending from its mouth. Twisted bodies are scattered about in frenzied disarray. At the far left, a hysterical woman screams as she clutches her dead baby in her arms.

            Picasso chose his palette intentionally. A full-color representation would have simply repeated a long line of gruesome paintings of war scenes and quietly joined them. The understated coloration heightens the message and draws attention to the subject, not the technical skill of the artist.

            The "Guernica" hangs by itself, unadorned. Today and all days it serves its lonely and terrible purpose - sadly, to so little effect. Not much has changed. Nations continue to take up arms against nations, slaughter continues, the downtrodden and unheard are defenseless victims, and plowshares are in short supply.

 

            Despues del desayuno

            After breakfast and a second high-five with my new favorite Seattle Mariners fan, I continued to wander the labyrinth of streets, past late-awakening shops: mercado bins bulging with yellow corn, red and green tomatoes, papery-white garlic braids, golden Spanish onions, shiny purple eggplant, asparagus stalks, all sizes and shapes of peppers, and prickly-tipped alcachofa out in front. I passed sleepy storefronts, touristy and native. A vendor rolled out a cart with Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid sweatshirts on hangers. His helper inside fumbled with adhesive tape rearranging red-and-white striped posters of cerveza ads (San Miguel, Alhambra Mexquita).

            San Isidro, Eleventh Century field laborer and miracle-worker, is the patron saint of Madrid. His festival occurs on May 15th. Strung across the calle as I strolled were dozens of pennants proclaiming the annual event. Later that day, my wife and I joined the celebration.

            Past throngs of celebrants jammed together on sidewalks, adults and excited children spilling into the street, on the paraders came as far as the eye could see: dancers, and men wearing dapper culapos (traditional grey waistcoats) and black peasants' caps, women in colorful goyescos (elaborate gowns and dresses à la Goya) with combs and veils, each gender accessorized with traditional bright red boutonnières and crimson pom pom hair bows.

 

            Parading above the marchers were enormous gigantes, larger-than-life mannequins of saints and kings and queens ("of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas"), twelve feet tall and weighing over 100 pounds, each held aloft on poles by rotating teams. At street level were huge-visaged cabezudos ("Big Heads"), and zaldikos (half horse, half man), and kilikis serving to "protect" the royals by attacking shrieking children with foam rubber weapons.

            It was Madrileño Macy's without Dumbo and Goofy. Sadly, the San Isidro Festival also includes the world's largest bullfights. The parade looked like it would go on forever. We left to go find lunch.

            Jamon

            A brief digression: On street after street in Madrid and elsewhere in Spain, think "jamón." How many Spanish restaurants and shops might disappear overnight without multiple ham selections. They take up entire pages on menus. Thin or diced serrano ("from the mountains"), acorn-fed iberico, thin prosciutto, chunks of pancetta - varieties beyond naming, each beckoning hopefully from behind glass-front carnicerías. Shiny honey-brown and ruddy porcine hindquarters and shoulders hanging on hooks or in gauze baskets like so many outsized turkey drumsticks bigger than my head.

            In Spain, this is not Mom's plump, pink and juicy Easter offering on a platter, glazed with brown sugar, cloves, and honey. The Spanish version ranges from bacon-like strips, some the consistency of jerky, to cutlets, to tiny cubes on croutons. The preference is for thin. Sadly, the fascination eluded us despite not-so-subtle encouragement everywhere we ate.

 

           Que vergenza!

            As the days went on, emboldened by my guidebook Spanish, I thought my language skills were holding up pretty well. It didn't turn out that way. I walked confidently into a farmacia one afternoon. At the back counter, all I did was ask a young clerk where I could find a penis! Her mouth dropped open. To her credit she didn't call for backup, but she was quickly joined by a bespectacled man in a short white coat who came to her assistance.

            "What do you look for?" he asked in barely accented English - not offensively, but with an indulgent smile. "In Inglés is fine."

            My innocence was evident. I showed him the Spanish-to-English cheat sheet I'd painstaking prepared back home. He shooed the salesgirl away, who had the decency to grin, and he pointed out my error. Mortified, for a moment I forgot what I'd come in for. When in a hole, don't keep digging.

            I mumbled something or other and the gentleman waved me in the direction of the toiletries aisle. There I bought a hair comb (piene), plus a bottle of shampoo just to save face. When the coast was clear, I left. To blunder is human; to look stupider was avoidable.

            I would stick to English.
 

           Por la noche

 

            In the evenings, Madrid is a city of spires. The sunset from the top-floor room in our hotel was glorious! A yellow to orange to bright crimson glow framed churches and domes and overlay the city to distant mountains. There's such an exotic feel to this ancient city.

            With a lushness that's hard to describe, the Iberia of our imaginations wafted in through the louvered windows - all wisteria and bougainvillea and honeysuckle in the Andalusian spring - as if borne in by Manuel de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain." We leaned out and inhaled.

            Inhaled as well were fragments of Spain's tangled history - the Spain of the Armada; the Golden Age of El Greco, Velasquez, and Cervantes; of Columbus and Cortez, and Pizarro looting and pillaging their way across the globe; of galleons loaded with loot and targets for Sir Francis Drake and fellow pirates; the Inquisition; and yes, bullfights. Walking, breathing, eating, and contemplating Madrid was the epicenter of all things Spanish.

            Before venturing out for our obligatory late evening dinner, we listened as a young Andrés Segovia wandered past in the street below. He played Bach and a dash of flamenco before the sound faded around a corner. The restaurant where we ate that evening also provided music - a solitary violinist, more gypsy that classical, and perfect accompaniment to little green Spanish olives, paella (prawns, clams, and sausage; no rabbit!), and monkfish simmered in olive oil with red peppers, garlic, and sherry. No ham.

            The next morning before we left, I went back to a deserted and silent Plaza Mayor. I sat in the sun by myself and nursed a cup of coffee. Despite the colors and food and friendly people, I couldn't shake the scenes of the Inquisition. Maybe Madrid, more than many other major world cities, wears her history and character on her sleeve - the fantastic, the glorious, the delicious, and the sad.

            And we'd go back in a minute!